How do you feel about domain investing for 2017 ?

As we start the new year I thought it would be interesting to see where reader sentiment is towards domaining.

Are you more bullish about being a domain investor in 2017 or are you less bullish ?

This is more a personal assessment, the future might be bright for a certain niche like two letter .coms, but most readers don’t own those names. So base your answer on what you invest in and where you see the prospects for those investments.

Comments

With the advent of devices like Amazon Echo and Google Home I see domain names becoming less important. Also, sellers are using Amazon more and more negating the reason to even have a website let alone a domain name.

I see domain names eventually fading away in the next five years. The cost of building a site, marketing etc. is a factor. Why buy an expensive domain name and dump gobs of money into development when you reach millions of eyeballs selling through Amazon?

Why have a domain name? Geocities, myspace and so on are all so popular that you don’t need one…ebay gives you access to so many people and you don’t need to worry about how their policies may affect your sales…hotmail…or is it gmail?…Youtube…facebook…oh yes…amazon you say.

Why ever would anyone think having a centralized website where you control your web presence would be a good thing?

The internet doesn’t ever change and you can rely on all these platforms to have your best interests at heart.

I have a good friend that owns the killer name WhiteTrash.com. He had a million likes on his Facebook page until FB decided to suspend his page (for reasons he does not know) and he no longer has those 1 million likes.

Your domain name is your future. Don’t let someone else dictate what you own or or how you can use it

Honestly am bullish on domain names.
I feel so confident in .com and .com.ng domain extensions.

.com is already popular and will continue for a long long time while the .com.ng which is for Nigeria will increase in demand in time to come considering the steady yearly increase in internet users in the country which is estimated to be over 95million presently.

Considering that Nigeria is the most populous country in Africa with over 185million people also makes it viable for domain business with the number of ecommerce activities increasing daily.

We are gradually seeing sales report of .com.ng domains from sedo just like the recent one for Betting.com.ng and CasinoOnline.com.ng

With everything continuing to move online, and connect to the internet, and many countries still experiencing online growth, I’m still bullish on domains. Good .com’s and .ca’s (where I concentrate) will continue to be in demand whether the economy is up or down (just like domains weathered the 2007-2009 economic meltdown). I think new gtlds have taken a bit of the wind out of traditional extensions, let’s face it new extensions have soaked up a lot of investor money and the odd new gtld is starting to be seen in the wild, but I think that effect will smooth out over time because each new gtld only has a limited range of useful keywords. I think we will continue to see a robust domain market as companies and individuals seek to differentiate themselves and own the keywords and phrases that matter to their identity. One industry that should be good to domains is legal medical and recreational cannabis, which is spreading around North America and will create new businesses for products, services and support, where nothing existed before.

Bullish, but selectivity will be increasingly important with so many choices cluttering the landscape. As far as domains becoming obsolete, this seems unlikely. The specificity of the domain name is as important to site visitors as the exact street address when Fedex is trying to deliver a package to one particular doorstep. Try calling someone without knowing their phone number. You can Google “John Smith” for his number, but that might not be efficient. A good domain name still makes sense on all levels.

I owned an amazon aND ebay store for a few years dropped them for own site now profits way up. You compete with people willing to work for pennies and amazon sees your data. They are,also your competitor. The worst thing is you are a tenant and they can kick you out at any time for any reason.

I’m curious if the future doesn’t bring a resurgence to keyword and universal terms – even Longtail phrases. People want to be able to find options and not be limited and keyword terms is a way to discover hidden gem/over-looked entities or sources available. Brands will always be king, but it’s only one segment of the market.

2016 was a dud. But there was so much confusion about the new gTLDs over-supply; which has now been cleared up as (1) consolidation and (2) many of the 1000s of crap gTLDs are unplugged this year. If you have been paying attention to the business news, 2016 represented a revolution in traditional TV advertising and legacy storefront retailing. E-Commerce and digital advertising has overtaken the aforementioned mediums for making sales. The writing is on the wall, as Sears, Macys, Kmart, etc., are laying off thousands and closing storefronts to start 2017. With the Chinese domain market having peaked, all these factors taken together bold well for the value of premium dot-coms. Securing your place in cyber space is more important than ever, whether it be for politics, business, blogging; or whatever, to have a voice, you will need a premium location in cyber space period. Remember, Google is a domain address 1st, and a search engine 2nd. Likewise, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram are places in cyber space…

The prices on one-word and two-word generics with commercial meaning are about to reach all-time highs in 2017-2018. Every corporations will be on the hunt for the exact matching generics for their products and services. The fog has cleared, and money is about to be made as VC investors are flush with cash and seeking appreciation. DNJournal.com is going to chart some major sales in dot-com this year…stay tuned.

Bullish on one-word, two-word and acronym Brandable, Generic, Keyword .Com and ccTLD names.
Neutral on .Co .Net .Org .in
Bearish on most new gTLD’s, Invented brandables and three word names.
Coverage Initiated on .Web. Buy .Web names when they become available.
.XYZ bubble to burst late 2017 early 2018. A lot of .XYZ names will not be renewed.

Bruce’s post at the beginning of this thread is more right than wrong. He’s especially right, at least for now, in terms of small businesses NOT paying big prices for domains in the secondary market, when these entrepreneurs are already satisfied with their Amazon storefront and Facebook presence.

However, the story isn’t over. Amazon is like a friend who will get you into trouble and then pull you out of trouble. As a new registry, they have scores of nTLDs that they will be publicizing, both for internal and commercial third-party use. Likewise for Alphabet’s new registry. Those two leviathans have the power to quickly shift public awareness about nTLDs.

Amazon passing on the opportunity to acquire .SHOP in 2016 means that their nTLD deployments and marketing efforts will become considerably more heterogeneous. They will be pushing a big menu of nTLD options to precisely the audience that Bruce identifies as being crucial to the long-term health of the secondary market. Amazon and Alphabet will also be showcasing nTLDs in their own marketing campaigns, and not necessarily their own TLDs.

Across the lake, Rightside’s Taryn Naidu talks about how we’ll see more domains being used as a call to action. A Toyota radio advertisement during the Seahawks-Lions game today urged listeners to visit BuyAToyota.com. In addition to demonstrating a call to action, this use of a three-word domain shows how companies are promoting more domains than simply their own core brand. Toyota.com is less relevant for consumers than BuyAToyota.com.

Bruce knows more about the weaknesses of some us than he’s letting on. A big weakness for those of us with limited inventories is to set prices that are far above market norms. This kills liquidity and locks up the market. Liquidity increases as prices fall.

A benefit of nTLDs is that it has allowed for inventory expansions to occur at low up-front costs. With bigger inventories, there is less pressure to keep listing domains at stupidly high prices.

We could see three to five years of doldrums before nTLDs take off in the secondary markets. But that timeframe could be shortened dramatically if Amazon and Google begin promoting their own nTLDs in 2017. To date, Amazon has been delegated 52 nTLDs. Google’s Charleston Road Registry has 43. Those two industry disruptors come from outside the industry, which is fitting. We could all use some disruption.